Monday, August 20, 2012

Ann Voskamp wrote a book called One Thousand Gifts. Although, I myself have not read it (yet) my mom has. So now as a family we have begun a search of 1,000 gifts. As we sit at the dinner table we take our notebooks and write down gifts God has given us.

Recently I heard a song called “Good to be Alive” by Jason Gray.

With hearing the song and starting 1000 gifts I’ve been thinking more on the need to enjoy the moment and not take each day for granted, or any gift God has given me for granted.

I want to be on the look out each day for the all the things God has given me…from the big things to the little things. I want to stop, close my eyes, breath in, listen to the birds chirp, and thank God for the moment, for each breath given to me.

I’m planning on blogging about my gifts fairly often so be on the lookout ;).

A couple gifts right now…

Walking along the warm, summer sand with little sister following along, filling in my foot prints.

Watching dolphins jump around in the ocean.

Yes, we are at the beach…so this might be the only post you’ll see for a while. I’ll be back soon!

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Last month some girls and I at church decided we wanted to start getting together every month with the rest of the girls in our youth group to study God’s Word together. Every month we pick a chapter to read throughout the month and then get together to discuss it.

We call it “Gain…losing self to gain Christ.”

This past month’s reading was Philippians 3 so I decided I would share with you what I got from it this month.

I have a few questions that I used to study with so I’ll be sharing through my answer to the questions.

What does God value?

“…rejoice in the Lord.” (Philippians 3:1) – God values the joy we find in Him.

- Jesus should be our goal. We should make it our goal to be like Him and press on to achieve it. Everything on this earth should be counted as loss, rubbish, for “our citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20)

One of the verses that really stuck out to me as I would read was verse 12:

“Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me His own.” –Philippians 3:12

Too many times we take for granted that Christ has made us His own. Christ deserves more than we give Him. Many times we don’t strain to become like Jesus. We don’t always give our everything. We don’t always give Christ everything He deserves.

Our main goal in life should be to strain forward to become like Jesus.

Although there is so much more I could share I’ll close with this verse…

“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” –Philippians 3:8

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

God is a great God.
He makes the impossible possible.
Who else can create an entire universe by only speaking?
Who else can part the Red Sea for His people to walk on dry ground?
Who else can make a man be swallowed by a fish and survive?
Who else can close the mouths of hungry lions to keep His faithful servant from being eaten?
Who else can make the lame to walk, the deaf to hear, the blind to see, and the dead to live?

I began reading the book of Luke yesterday. In the first chapter Luke writes about the angel telling Mary, a virgin, that she would give birth to a Son, Jesus. As the angel was speaking to her he said, “For nothing will be impossible with God.” (Luke 1:37).

Nothing.
We see all throughout Scripture that God is an awesome and powerful God and that nothing is impossible for Him.

There is nothing He cannot do. So many times we fail to trust Him though. We pray without faith, not really believing that what we ask for He will answer. Or we believe that He will answer but that it will not be in the way we want it.

If we really believe that God is such a great God and His plan is so perfect why do we fail to trust Him? Why don’t we turn over everything to Him and rest in His goodness and faithfulness instead of worrying about it ourselves?